iPhone Losing Marketshare to Android OS

Apple lost market share in the highly competitive smartphone market in a three month period ending in May according to comScore—a company that specializes in internet marketing research. Neither was Apple alone either. Research In Motion (RIM), Microsoft and Palm also lost market share. The only winner was Google Android OS powered devices that gained 44% (a gain of 4% of the total market), to reach 13% of the total smartphone market in the United States.

Apple currently has 24.4% of the market, down 1% from February. Microsoft is holding in at 13.2% which is a 1.9% decrease. Palm has a tiny 4.8% and lost 0.6%. And finally, RIM fell 0.4% to 41.7%.

While these figures do not count whatever market share Apple may have gained since the June launch of its wildly popular iPhone 4, they do make it clear that Apple has some serious competition from Android. This might be a sign that touchscreen devices and app stores might be influencing consumer buying more than anyone previously thought. However, to put this all into perspective, realize that of the 234 million cellphones in use, only 49.1 million are smartphones. RIM’s large chunk of the smartphone market only equals out to 8.7% of all phones in the country.

So what is Apple to do in light of these numbers? They probably do not come as much of a surprise. Since a wide array of phone manufacturers make devices that run Google’s Android operating system, new devices that run the OS come out in regular intervals. New iPhone launches are yearly affair. Getting another carrier, like Verizon Wireless (rumored to be happening around January) would make the iPhone more popular among consumers that dread AT&T’s congested network or are already locked into a contract with Verizon.

I will be looking forward to the next batch of marketshare numbers that come out to see how much of an impact the iPhone 4 is having on the ever growing smartphone market. In the meantime, let me know if you think if Android is going to outpace the iPhone by the coming year, if it will take more time than that, or if Android will eventually lose some of its charm and remain a strong, but not dominant player.